


It's Not Anger (but I can't label it by any other name)

by claudeclaudeclaude



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: But only brief eye trauma, Eye Trauma, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hades is a Bad Parent, Hatred, Hypnos and Thanatos are only there briefly, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, It's just a sentence, Nyx is only mentioned, Persephone is mentioned in passing too, Violent Thoughts, Zagreus has thoughts, and it's imagined.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:46:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28821699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claudeclaudeclaude/pseuds/claudeclaudeclaude
Summary: Zagreus doesn't hate him. He doesn't.That would make him just as bad, worse, than him.And besides- what is there to hate? All he is is thanks to him.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	It's Not Anger (but I can't label it by any other name)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my groupchat for reading through it and encouraging me you are all too kind and so sweet n I love u all for the support even if we are in completely different fandoms LMAO <3

You are, you are. You _ are _ . You are not-

A  father — no, he is just a man, a God, unrelated to him. Or, perhaps - related to him.

But only reluctantly.

No. He is not.  _ He is not. _ For Zagreus does not know the man he sees in his dreams anymore. Despite - despite having _ his _ face - no, not necessarily his face, even. Just his anger, burning and angry and horrid branding itself upon Zagreus’ skin by a scorching iron.

And if this is what family, if this is what inheritance is all about, then he wants  _ out. _

He is… something of an enigma, an unsolvable puzzle; missing a piece or several, and Zagreus can no longer tell where all these pieces fit within him. Maybe they never fitted in the first place.   
Or perhaps a lock whose key has been bent too far; too much, and no longer can it be unlocked with this key. Or perhaps, this strange feeling, this flower within himself, blooming in him and pushing against his lungs, is the result of something unchecked. Some blossoming feeling that feels so foreign, so strange, itching against his ribcage and yet settling within his body like it has lived there all the time, and he doesn’t know when—

When it came here. When it set up itself within his body, making its home between his heart and his lungs, lodged like a stone or- or a bullet. Straight through the heart, the shoulder, somewhere unidentifiable yet there. There. Always there. 

It is horrid. Ugly. Gross. He needs to cover it up, it’s unnatural, it is sick.

It is there.

There is a name for this feeling. At least, Zagreus thinks there is. 

_ He knows there is. _

Some part of him screams it at him: in his sleep; in his subconscious; when he’s pouring over parchment work and administrative reports and numbers. When he wakes and when he sleeps, even under the cover of night he is haunted. Plague. It is the whistle of a kettle and the slight of an erratic pulse running its way through his bloodstream when he’s training and _ there is a word for this. _ There is. Of course there is.

He would be a fool not to understand this.

It’s anger.

It is not. Perfection does not beget anger, least of all towards him.

Papa. Father. Dad?

After all, all he has is because of him is it not?

Perhaps that was the day. Maybe. The trigger, the blood that poured from him on that day; unseen to his eyes yet right in front of him. That day when Zagreus was half the way across the world, yet right beside him, in his arms yet far removed. Unknowing. He knows not whether she should prod at this wound for long, whether he should dislodge the bullet from its home — whether it’s been at home for so long now that it would move regardless of what Zagreus himself wants.

But maybe. Maybe this was when. When the vase he was holding, cracked and threatening to shatter with each aching beat of his heart, sat upon the edge of a ledge and stared down as though it were a monarch addressing a crowd of thousands upon thousands of adoring citizens. When it spilled, fell with all the force of a raging storm and the tremors in the ground and he ducked under the table and waited for everything to pass before peaking out, surveying the damage.

Surveying the vase, the cracks, the chips that littered the floor. Water slipping between gaps of ceramic. Observing the choked sob that ripped from him, curling his hands into fists as he picked himself up, across the room, dancing a dance of a thousand daggers between shards of glass as he attempted to piece everything together with all the skills a 2 year old with clumsy hands too soft to withstand shards could muster. 

Perhaps all along the vase had been chipped, cracked, since the day he had been cursed to be born, and all this time his father had just been pretending that it hadn’t smashed. Yet at the same time directing all his ire, all the anger at him as though he had purposefully smashed it. But-

But that could not have been the beginning. The source. For there was not one day that he could find, not when decades had passed much the same and all the days had a tendency to roll into the other, especially when time was not a measurement used as widely in the underworld. Especially when night and day was indistinguishable sans the pockets of sleep that he’d begun to snatch less of, less of and less of as the days sift their ways past him until the current.

And it has been unchecked, this feeling. This slip inside his chest, thumping like a heart, like a conscience, yet it is too disgusting. Too evil, too vile, to address. To rip out and stare at under the gaze of the candles, for they would wilt under the snake that slithers under his skin, sits in his ribcage and waits to choke him.

Too much time has passed, and trying to bookmark a time when it all changed would be like reading a book whose pages had been teared and burnt at random intervals, and it frustrates him to no end. But it is unchecked, and it has grown, and it resides within him now. And it makes him feel ill, want to vomit out the sickness, the disease, that sits within his chest.

He wonders, briefly, whether he should ask Mother Night about this. About illnesses that plague the Gods, but he doesn’t feel strong enough to have his beliefs confirmed.

It is just a sickness.

It is not—

That emotion. Evil, angry emotion. For that would make him no better- no better than him.

He is better than him. He is.

So it cannot- will not  _ ever _ be  _ that _ emotion. For Zagreus is not his father, he is not his father. 

**-**

He recalls the day, the spill of Elysium’s glow falling through the curtains, the feel of velvet against his hands, small and thin and slight as they were holding heavy curtains before he tore himself away from them and stared at the boy. That strange boy at her father’s side, with a funny accent and that funny hairstyle and the nervous disposition. How his father was firm with him, gripping his shoulder with a pale hand and paler knuckles.

Silence had hung over the house, for a while. Settling into the crevices, the cracks, and Zagreus had estimated the boy to only be a few years older than himself. Yet his father’s grip upon his shoulder, the gentle push, it was as though there was an entire world that sat beyond the house of his father that Zagreus lay unaware of, as old as he was or was not in this realm where time began to lose its meaning after a while.

And Zagreus had thought, then, that this was something he was not meant to watch. To lay his eyes upon, as his father spoke in short, harsh whispers. Slight, snipped words that he couldn’t quite make out, but felt as strong, as sharp, as the slice of his training instructor’s jabs in his side as he trained. He slipped back behind the lines, unwilling to be caught.

To be the object of his father’s ire was not good. It meant you had done something bad, he knew, but there was something about the curl of his father’s lip, the slight tap of his fingers upon his desk. So big, so so tall, so much more of a presence than the slip of the boy in front of him, all white curls and half-sleepy gaze that Zagreus had wanted to step out. To prevent whatever punishment was to come—

But he deserved it. Probably. Maybe.

In all his years, Zagreus had come to be accustomed to the tics of his father. The things that made his father his father, the broadness of his shoulders and the low voice that could bellow down corridors, yet each and every time he hadn’t yet come accustomed to the smile of his father. Had only caught it in a couple of tricks of the light, tricks of his own eyes — his father didn’t smile. Would never smile.

But when he pushed his head around the edge of his doorway again, unable to retract his eyes, he caught the slip of his father’s face. The curl, the sight, that looked so foreign on his father that it was wrong. Much, much worse than the yelling and the imprint of ashen footprints thudding down the hallways, for it was-

Ugly. Something spiteful, horrific, to watch. To regard. Made him feel ill, nauseous, a thread within his stomach pulling itself apart — he had watched something he should not have. It was unbidden, the roiling fire that shimmied through his veins, through his body, a flash of lightning disguised as a passing of judgement that slammed against his heart like a clock. Like a bell tower, a ringing fury slamming into his axis and making him dizzy, so dizzy, so nauseous that he could barely  _ stand  _ for all but a second before he was bubbling. A boiling heat that evaporated his rationality, his thoughts slipping out of his head for but a second. A moment.

A slip of the hour passed by, and all that remained was the bubbling, surging instinct to fight. To hit something, to kick something. To find something sharp, to find something that could cause damage and attack something. Knock over a table, a lamp, carve something angry, sharp, into something. Do something permanent, impactful, and unlike the simmering ire that slashed through his mind—

This stayed. Resting in his mind for a while, weeks rolling into months, and maybe that was the beginning of it all..

Maybe. Perhaps. Curling his hands into velvet curtains, clenching his fists as though they were weapons, as though he had his hands around something solid. Something that could feel hurt, pain, that he could upset his father, wipe the sight of his face out of his mind.

**-**

It is not anger. It is not hatred. To hate is to be mortal,  _ or to be his father, _ and he is neither of those things. He is not. He is not.

So that leaves him with the conclusion that he is sick. Ill. Diseased in some way that causes thorns to stab him, poke him through his ribcage with white heat that causes the hairs on the back of his neck to rise and that uncomfortable, nauseous roiling  _ thing  _ to take hold of his senses for a minute or two whenever he stops to think of it. Whenever he stops to ponder on his father’s actions, on the way he speaks, the way he addresses himself.

Small snippets of ‘boy’, of condescending speech that grates at each and every nerve in his body, and each time Achilles spars with him he cannot help but imagine his father in Achilles’ place.

Imagine his father with Stygius bludgeoned through him, standing over him like a predator hunting prey. A darkness gleaming in his mismatched eyes as he regards his father, fallen by his hand, banished by his own offspring, and he feels sick to focus on it.

But he cannot control it. The thoughts, the heaviness of a weapon that throbs, that thrives, off his own life. As though it lives itself, as though his weapons are alive, and they feed upon these thoughts. This disease. This illness.

That is all it is.

It is all that it is. An illness that makes him uncomfortable, and the cause of it is… something like his father. Taking the shape of his father, but not because-

Not because of hatred. Or anger. 

Because- because his father is all he’s ever known. So of course a sickness would take the form of him too.

It doesn’t make any sense to Zagreus, but he won’t accept another answer.

He won’t accept that it is anger.

For it cannot be. It cannot be.

_ It cannot be. _

**-**

Watching Hypnos and Thanatos, communicating with Mother Night had always caused some unease within Zagreus. 

He didn’t mean for it to happen, didn’t mean to feel… that way, but he couldn’t help it, couldn’t help the—  jealousy? envy? from slipping under his skin like a second layer of clothing. Of skin. Underneath, like a dead corpse invading his living space. Lying underneath him, slumping all around him lazily, a gigantic shadow relaxing against his spine as he watched them.

It was sick, green and ugly and vile, and each time it reared its ugly head he suppressed the urge to plunge his hand into his chest, to squeeze at the space where he knew his heart to be until it ceased beating. Ceased seizing up, squeezing with that sickness whenever he saw things such as these.

But there was something, something about the gentleness with which Nyx dealt with her children that set something off within Zagreus.

_ Why was that not him? Why? Where had he gone— where had he gone wrong, to have not received-? From his father? _

Nyx was not particularly abundant with her love, but nor was she restrained. She was calm. Fluid, Her actions reflected the fluidity of the night, the calmness and the coolness of night, and there was nothing unsaid between her children that would confuse things, that would complicate things. Even in her punishments, she was never…

She never raised her voice. Never threatened them. Never-

Why was it not him?

She could be harsh, she could be upset, but never fiery. Never explosive, and everyone knew where they stood when talking with her. And for all the obscurities of night, for all the lack of vision that the cloak of darkness provided everyone with, Zagreus would’ve preferred a thousand days under the watch of night than a passing hour stood in the firing line of his father’s blazing ire. Anger.

It was not fair.

And Nyx had raised him, had treated him as best as she could, but it was different. Less attached. A performativity to her actions that left him wanting more, something hollow within him that could not be filled by night alone, but yearned for something he knew not of. Though if he had to hazard a guess, he’d have imagined it to feel something like sweetness, like Elysium’s springs and trees and plants, like pomegranates and gardenias.

Something, anything, that would fill the void, the chasm, that seemed to split exponentially whenever his father spoke to him. Whenever he stood under the gaze of his father, feeling the blaze of his judgement bore its gaze all the way into the back of his figure.

It was _ not _ envy. Not jealousy. He was just— wanting for something more than he had, he was just ungrateful. 

It was despicable, really. Being the prince of the underworld yet wanting more still- what more could he want?

_ A father who car- _

-He cut off his thought and didn’t wait long enough for it to grow two more heads within its place.

**-**

“You’ve been acting weird recently,”

It is as much an observation as it is a question, a prompt, and yet Zagreus’ brain cannot work quick enough; can’t figure out a way to answer it without… exposing himself, or something of the sort. So instead, he chuckles nervously as Thanatos observes him and places both his hands out on the table before them. Palms flat, as though the act of holding nothing could reflect the thought he is mentally open.

Inviting his friend for drinks was not meant to be this… invasive, yet he finds himself shifting still under the gaze of Thanatos. Watchful, the eye of death cannot miss anything.

Still, he tries to conceal it.

“I’m fine, Than. Just working hard, as  _ you _ have been doing, too,” he grins, though he doesn’t quite manage to remove a slither of upset from his voice long enough to pull his syllables, draw them out.

Thanatos grimaced, “You know how work is, Zag.”

“N-not that there’s anything  _ wrong  _ with that, it’s just… we haven’t really seen each other much recently. So it’s- a weird? Um, not weird, but y’know,” he gestures vaguely, “just a… thing to bring up,”

Guilt hits him, because he is not wrong. Thanatos is not wrong. There is… something, something is brewing, and Zagreus feels… so close. So weirdly close to snapping, to shifting, to some big change. On the cusp of the edge of the world and yet not looking ahead, not looking down, just staring in a trance at a wall as though everything is the same. Same as it ever was.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

Nothing will be the same, nothing.

But he cannot tell Thanatos this. Cannot tell Thanatos anything, because he wouldn’t understand. He couldn’t understand that Zagreus is sick, ill, that there’s this thing eating at him— Gods don’t get sick, and Zagreus is… well, maybe not a God, but he’s not a mortal. And non-mortals don’t get sick. But he is sick, there is something, and he is ill.

And Death Incarnate cannot- would not, understand that.

Much less would he understand that he cannot stay, that his own father is like- poison, like acid, like anathema to him now.

Not anathema. No, because it’s not-

It’s not hatred. It cannot be. Not directed at his father.

“Suppose so,” Thanatos shrugs, “but still…”

“Promise, I’m just very tired, I’ve been working.”

Lie. 

Thanatos has been working, that much is true, but Zagreus has not been working so much as planning. Plotting. There is something brewing, something, something, and there’s a pain in his ribs, and nothing will be the same soon, and yet everything will still continue just as it did before Zagreus came to be.

Everyone will be better off without him, in retrospect. He wonders why he never thought of this sooner, even as he swirls his drink in his glass and ponders when he last felt something other than hollowness or that sickness eat away at his soul, and comes up without an answer.

“Well, it’s good you’re working at least. After the last argument with your dad… it’s good you got over it,” Thanatos shrugs, and Zagreus feels so alienated in the moment.

He doesn’t know where it comes from, the feeling of alienation. The feeling of being removed, so far removed, and it’s always existed within the boundaries of his mind of course, but he has never been so close to the concept that he has brushed against it within the same vicinity as his own best friend. Thanatos cannot understand him, will not understand him, because Thanatos is good, and right. Thanatos does not feel ill at the thought of his parent, nor does Hypnos.

They just- wouldn’t get it, would they?

They wouldn’t understand the dreams, the thoughts that slip under his mind when he’s in a fog, a trance, of blood and gore, of standing over his father like a champion. Of slaying his own kin— he is wrong. Evil, for that, even. For wanting to hurt, for wanting to slash at his eye with his weapon, his eye that glints like his father’s in the mirror, to cast it far away. To blind himself to spite his father.

But it’s not- hatred. It’s just a sickness.

And they just wouldn’t get it, 

It is just an ailment, and the cure lies somewhere beyond the gates of Tartarus, so he has to leave. He needs to go.

And that was why he’d invited Thanatos for drinks, originally, to explain this. To ask for not help, but for forgiveness, for leaving him. But now his throat clasps up, a hand around his neck that is warm and bejeweled with green and red gemstones, too large to belong to anyone but his father, and he cannot speak. Cannot beg for any form of forgiveness, and he was foolish for expecting him to understand.

Zagreus is ill, is wrong, and the proof lies in the fact that he cannot think straight anymore. That he will not free himself from this until he cuts his eyes out, carves his path away from his father, away from this place.

**-**

He is not a murderer. He is not, even when Tisiphone’s yelling rings in his mind, and the gross feeling peels itself away from him long enough for him to regain control of his thoughts, of all rational thought, as he observes. Watches, plunges his sword into his father’s chest and watches as he halts to a still and—

It is meant to be cathartic, it is meant to feel horrible, it is meant to feel like… something like the five stages of grief that he is sure exist in something more than theory, at least upon the mortal plains they are fighting upon now. But as his father collapses into the snow, all he feels is hollow. Weird. Wrong. Like he has freed himself just to tangle himself back up into a web of shallowness, and even if he tears his eye from his face he has been reborn enough times to understand that all things will restore themselves.

Maybe he is closer to Godhood than he thought—

_ Maybe he is closer to his father than he thought. _

He feels ill, standing over his father as he sinks into the familiar rivers, reclaimed by the Styx in a way that Zagreus can almost feel, and yet he cannot feel anything in terms of emotion. Not- not anything sans for a weird sense of closure that creeps in, embraces him in a way similar to the way the snow crowds around him as he himself sinks to his knees. Dizziness creeps in in his stead, and only then does he realise he is shaking.

Quaking, and there’s a wetness on his face that wasn’t there a while ago, and he feels ill.

Very ill.

And it’s meant to be… healing, but all he feels is an overwhelming sense of nothingness. Of reaching the top of a mountain and not  _ looking  _ at any of the views, and not taking in the scenery below, but closing his eyes and just focusing. It is weird, very weird, but there is no reward. No certificate, and the sun still streams in before them, and he is not a murderer.

He isn’t. He is just Zagreus.

Stygius shivers in his grasp, and he wonders whether his heart thumps because it is free or because it will never be free, but he cannot go back. Cannot go back to where his father lies, where he knows Hades will be, because that would not be winning.

But what is winning, if not this? Because this does not feel like winning at all, and he just feels. Lost.

Weird.

Accepting his fate, twisted as it feels, and he repels the label of murderer, the thought of him being a father killer, yet he still feels strange about it all. Did he- actually kill his father?

A shadow waits behind him, a shadow that slumped within him for a while, a shadow that has been watching him. Waiting for him. A shadow in the shape of everything he has known for a long while, now, and it does not say a word. It feels weird, eerily like the echo of something he used to hate, something he began to embrace, and yet nothing like it all the same. The same emotion, redressed into something more understandable, and he cannot come to terms with it still.

Because if it  _ is _ what he knows it is, if he labels it, then he is no different, no better, than his father. And he is too hollow, too empty, to analyse anything other than the tunnel-vision that has encompassed his sight.

It is not anger. It is not hatred.

Zagreus does not hate, Zagreus is not a murderer. He is not the man he despises. He is too tired to pick out the oxymorons, the contradictions, but there is a distinction and he knows there is but he does not know how to word it. But there is a distinction, between his anger and his father’s anger, but his anger is not really anger.

Mostly because it is not the same as his father’s anger. He does not know exactly. The details are too blurry to make sense to him, and it takes him a while to rise from the snow and begin to swallow what exactly just happened.

And nothing will be the same again. Nothing will be the same again.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Hi I am not sure entirely about this, I wrote the majority of it in one sitting and I'm feeling very. Unsure? about this piece as a whole but... Yeah. My better (worse) judgement decided 'ah, just throw it out there!' so here we are.
> 
> Regardless, thank you for reading this little fic thing.  
> I'd love to know what you think of it if you have read this far, so please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts! I love reading them!! Thank you again :)


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